Don't forget that an "OldWorldPPC" doesn't use yaboot..... it uses bootx or something like that...

When downloading files from a Debian mirror, be sure to download the files in binary mode, not text or automatic mode. It's important to replicate the directory structure you find on the mirror to create a local `sub-mirror'. It isn't really necessary to do this if you place all the installation files on floppies; but it still makes it easier to find the files when you need them. You should start your local directory structure at the level under disks-powerpc, for example:

current/subarchitecture/images-1.44/flavor/rescue.bin

You don't need to download every file under that level, just those that apply to you (you'll find out which ones apply as you read on). Just name the directories the same as the mirror's, and keep the files in their proper directories.

If your machine is set up to automatically decompress/decode files you download, you must turn that feature off when downloading the installation system files. They will be decompressed just-in-time by the installer. Decompressing in your current system will waste space and time, and if the original compressed archives are deleted by the decompression program, they won't be there later when the installer needs them. Also, many of the binary files such as yaboot will be automatically interpreted as text since they have no file extensions unless you specifically select binary transfer mode. These files will be unusable if they are transferred in text mode.

...and maybe these instructions will help a bit.

http://www.geocities.com/wcrowshaw.g...to_install.txt

Like I said earlier, I personally have never had any luck with making bootable CDs for either the Mac or the PC. That's why I always go for network installs..., sometimes using rawwrite floppies to direct the installation/downloading process when apropos.

##############################
##############################
Files you may need fall into three categories:

1. Files needed to boot into the installation system (for example, rescue.bin, linux.bin, and root.bin)

2. Files the installation system will need access to after it has been booted in order to install the operating system kernel and peripheral drivers (for example, rescue.bin and drivers.tgz)

3. Base system installation files (for example, basedebs.tar)

If you have a working Ethernet connection on the computer, and your Ethernet card is of one of the types compiled into the installation kernel, you may only need the install system boot files. The installer is capable of installing the kernel and drivers over the network for many common Ethernet cards.

If you have an Ethernet connection for which the installer doesn't have built-in support, you may need both the install system boot files and the kernel and peripheral driver installation files.

If you are installing on a system without a working network connection, or if your network connection is via PPP (using a modem) rather than Ethernet, you will need to obtain all three types of files before starting the installation.

If you're not sure which files you need, just start with the install system boot files. If your first attempt to configure the network within the installer fails, you can just quit, get the extra files you need, and re-start the installation.

The base system installation file basedebs.tar is currently about 27M. If you are able to use a CD, or configure your network before installing the base system, it is better to do so; in that case you won't need this file. The network location is listed in the appendix (Debian Base System Installation Files, Section 11.2.3.4).
http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...#s-base-images

tjj, that's interesting. But if I were to startup from a floppy, how would the installer find the CD if it won't mount? I can't get the CD to mount to the desktop while the 7500 is already booted so that I could then restart while holding down the 'c' key or selecting the mounted CD in the startup control panel and restarting.

Glanz, I am trying a network install from the CD I referenced above. It's a net install CD for woody on powerpc. And it has all the files you mentioned for whatever the situation, yaboot, bootx, etc... all to be determined once you're booted up with a net connection. I downloaded it with curl which came through nicely as an ISO, not text or otherwise. It's about 27 MB.

I've used Toast many times to make bootable CD's without any troubles. So, it's a mystery to me why this isn't working.

I'll have a look at your last link you posted now...

And.... thanks for helping.

I haven't helped much it seems! BTW, I've never touched a 7500 in my life. This iBook is my first Mac.... after all those loooooooooooong and painful years.... *sigh* :confused:

All I can suggest now is to go to the following two sites, sign up, and pose the important questions. These are truly good sites full of really expert Debian users of all stripes.

http://www.debianhelp.org/

http://www.debianplanet.org/

Glanz, you're giving me a lot of info to think about which hopefully will point me to the solution. And I appreciate that.

Maybe I'll go the floppy method of net install then. It pains me to think about that and how slow it is. But, hey, if it works I will be happy.

It's not that slow..... The floppies merely direct the download to the correct files and then arrange them in a coherent format. Sometimes it's actually faster because if you have a fast connection, then you'll hear a reassuring schalk-sclaksputz sound of the machine reading the floppies from time to time. :D

Whoops! Some messages are coming through very close to one another. So, I hadn't seen your links of late for posting questions. That could be a good call.

Oh yea, what I meant about the floppy method being slow wasn't the act of the net install but rather the making of the darn things. You know the old insert one floppy and copy then eject, insert another one and the same, etc...

I just ordered a Woody PPC installation CD from
http://www.everythinglinux.com.au/ca...9df1b847620918
I will try to install it on an older Mac ppc portable at work and I will let you guys know if it works. It costs $10.......

That's nice of you Glanz. I haven't gotten much further myself. I'm currently looking at some newsgroups for comp.os.linux.powerpc to see if I find anything that might help. I already looked at the mailing list archives but didn't come up with much specific to my situation. Most everyone there was able to install and then had other problems. But nothing about not being able to get a net install floppy or CD working, and some on similar models to mine too. Sheesh!

Check this out.... LOL!

I like this part the best>>

...<<When people have to sacrifice chickens to their scsi bus, stand
on their heads in a corner, and pray to LinuxPPC's favorite deity
(Cthulu??) in order to get an install going, that is IMHO a problem.>>

I'm not too sure about chickens..... Don't have any...., but I have a nice cat I could lend you...:D

....maybe swallowing a few goldfish would do.... :)

Progress Report
 

Last night, I finally got the floppies made after much difficulty. The instruction page tells you what files you might need but doesn't offer links to all of them which made it all harder to find the correct ones. And even after making them, it tells you how unreliable they are.

I had numerous kernel panics which then you have to wait for three minutes until it will reboot. I found that it was the ram disk part that seemed to cause them and I would have to shut down and wait a good five minutes before trying again or I'd get another one right away.

Eventually, I was able to get the ram disk loaded and begin the install. I got to partition the drive and then select the net install method but got the same kernel panic at that point, perhaps because it didn't like the host name I gave it which was the default one. In retrospect, I probably should have given it the same one as it had for the mac os. Or it could have been the default url that it didn't like, I'm not sure.

At least I had some progress and I will be continuing in my spare time today.

Re: Progress Report
 

I just found this superbe resource for folks like us who want to install Linux on ppc...
Check these forums out... They are quite good...
http://forums.tuxppc.org/index.php

Thanks Glanz, that's a good one. Too bad more folks don't post there though. I did find one poster who is having the exact troubles I am. And it was from a long time ago too. No follow up on it though.

Here's where I'm at at the moment. Trying to get the net install comes back with, "wget: www.debian.org: Host name lookup failure". And I can use the exact same url from that box under OS 8.6 and connect no problem.

So, I thought about NFS mounting although I have no experience with NFS at all. Couldn't get it to work with a, "192.168.0.1: /Users/thatch/Documents/DebianStuff/". That's the recommended format for the server: path to files according to the installer.

And now I'm thinking of trying to copy all the necessary files to the HFS mac drive and see if I can point the installer to it. First attempt at that didn't work but I didn't have all the files there at the time.

I can't access the console much. As soon as you get one, it say to press enter to continue and then gives some brief instructions. Then anything I type after the prompt gets a kernel panic, will reboot in 180 seconds. Then I have to wait for the mac os to boot, shut that down, wait five minutes before trying to boot the installer again or it will KP immediately. What a PITA!

I know it's going to work great once I finally get it all together though. No wonder some of those guys you linked to took most of a week to get it installed. :eek:

It was much much easier on the iBook......

I now have some Debian CDs being made for the iBook... Regular DebianPPC CD's... I had two last week, but they weren't burned correctly. This time I have an expert at the U doing it for me.... a professor of InfoTech. He says that the whole ShEbAnG will come to about 7 CDs..... HolyMoley! ... 7CDs???/!!!! Oh well, I'll give it a try and if worse comes to Wurst, ot best to best, I'll make some copies and send them to you. You always wanted 6,000 applications, 4,000 of which no-one has any idea of the use, dontcha? HuHhUh???? In any case, once you've used Debian, you'll be hooked for life......
I'll get in contact with you in a week or so on that..... via the forum "send a msg" system. In the meantime, if you get Debian installed, you will have earned it. Your name will be engraved on the great geek monolith in the sky. Pilgrims will recall the Debian adventure as they read your name off the list and wonder..................
"who were these hopeless geeks anyway?"
{ok... I'll stop...}

Okay, great! BTW, I read on the install pages that you'll only need the first three CD's. But there are probably extra apps and pkgs on the rest on them.

My latest fiasco.... I was on OS 8.6 and using the old version of Netscape to d/l some of those files for me to point the installer to. And when I got done and quit Netscape, they all disappeared! I realized that I had to not only d/l them all over again, but also change each ones type and creator codes. Aaayyyyeee!

It's been like this the whole way through. Each little accomplishment is followed by an equal setback of sorts. It's kind of like shoveling ***** against the tide.

On those forums for linux, I could see there were a bunch of folks there who will also qualify for geekiest awarding, many never came back, which could be a good thing or a really bad thing. It's definitely not for the faint of heart.

:)hehe:) I was once on a sailboat sailing against the tide in the St Lawerence near Quebec City with a really strong wind. I was going full speed.... 7 knots against a tide rush of nine.......

I have installed Linux on at least 200 machines in my life, and FreeBSD on more. ...normally for others or for research depts..... On Macs too, but always with commercial CDs. I have had the usual hardware problems, but nothing radical. The problem with a Debian install on an older Mac is that no-one has really documented it...., well, I mean....
But if you ever get it installed, you'll love Debian. The ease of use is daunting. The power is amazing as is the quality of the application integration. It's getting through the door that's hard. We get lost in labyrinths of documentation like Alices in geek-speak wonderlands.

I will work later tonight and tomorrow morning researching your predicament. I'll be back. This is beginning to interest me a lot..... BTW, when I get those 7CDs, I'll install everything, except unnecessary server stuff, just for the fun of it. I figure it will take me five years to read launch and read the man pages for each app I'v never heard of......

All righty then,

Now I'm at the point where I am going to install the configure device driver modules. I had to make a couple of more floppies to get this far. Grrrr. A total of five of them now. But I'm not certain which drivers to install. I'm going to be following along the install instructions but that doesn't guarantee I'll know which ones even from that since it's particular to the 7500 is most cases. So, I'll probably have to guess at some of them. And I don't want to install any needless ones which could cause problems and take up ram. Grinding away now....

I read that if you wanted to install everything on all those CD's that you need about 2 GB including the system, but that you wouldn't necessarily want to do that because there are many packages that conflict with other packages.

If I get through this stage okay, I think the next thing is to update the kernel which could be tough. I know there are some in binary which would save me the compiling. To compile, I would need some packages installed too, which I'm not certain I could get with the small kernel I presently have. Ahh, the unknown. It's a mystery.

PowerMac 75001.0.5

* output-device defaults to ttya
* Requires special: output-device /chaos/control
* Need to Apply OF Patch at this link>>

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/S...f105patch.html

#########
Note...: Debian, especially after the instal, but also during if the system is up, will not let the user install conflicting packages. APT will detail all choices and options during conflicts to give the user a choice. Unlike RPM distros in whhch searching for dependencies lead to further often impossible to find dependencies, Debian is real sweeeeeeeet. If you ever do get it up, I'll lead you to some good lessons and give you a few really handy tips on APT-(get), dpkg, etc.
#############
That NetBSD site is good for instructions and patches. Remember, the same procedures apply, and the installation "interoperability" is total.

Glanz, where'd you find that OF patch? And at what stage of the installation should it be used? I've heard no mention of it on the instructions so far. I wonder if it could be why I can't:

1) install from a CD

2) install over a network connection even though I have DHCP working

I am currently stuck, again, on installing the base system file which is supposedly called basedebs.tar. It will expand or install to around 70 MB. But they don't mention anywhere about the path to finding it on their servers. There's nothing I've been able to install other than with floppies. And that one is just too big for that.

I've even tried installing some of the previous files needed by copying them to the apple disk on the 7500 and pointing the installer there. But the installer didn't like the path which apparently must be the same as the network install path. So, for basedebs.tar, I have no idea how to get it or what path I should arrange on my hard drive for it, (you have to make all the sub-directories and everything for the complete path with the same exact naming). It's not at all intuitive of much.

I had thought that perhaps I didn't have the correct config dev drivers and maybe that's why my CD-Rom won't mount a CD and that the network will say it's got the DHCP lease but not go to any url. The driver install parts are supposed to have a description if you select them and press enter but they don't. It just want to install them when you press enter. I can't see any of them have been installed at all because the base ones for the minimal system install are hidden from me at this stage. If I had a full install, I could go find them with the shell, but that's not an option yet because the shell will cause a kernel panic and I would have to start the entire installation over again at that.

I'm currently twiddling my fingers in dismay. :confused:

I just happend by chance to find the basedebs.tar. But I have my doubts about it liking my path to it once I download and move it over to the 7500.